QTS (Quality Technology Services) has announced that the company has achieved Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design(LEED) Gold Certification for Data Center 1 at the QTS Richmond Data Center. The certification encompasses all current customer environments at the company’s Richmond facility—one of the world’s largest and most secure data center campuses. 

Developed by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), LEED is an internationally-recognized green building certification system. The LEED Certification Review Report gave the QTS Richmond site high marks for sustainable site selection, water efficiency and optimized energy use in HVAC systems as well as systems and appliances. Factors that further contributed to the achievement of the certification included use of green power, responsible waste management and recycling in the construction process, as well as in innovation in design.

“It is an impressive achievement to attain LEED Gold in a facility that was not originally built to be a data center,” said Rick Fedrizzi, president, chief executive officer and founding chair—U.S. Green Building Council. “QTS’ engineering and data center operation teams, as well as its building and engineering contractors, should be justifiably proud of attaining LEED Gold with a broad array of energy efficient initiatives on the Richmond campus. Their hard work has led to the QTS Richmond Data Center being certified as one of the world’s greenest high-performance buildings.” 

QTS has been retrofitting the former semiconductor plant for data center usage since the first customer installation was completed in November 2010. Since 2011, the company has recycled more than six million pounds of materials from its data centers, including copper, aluminum, steel, plastic and concrete, with the majority of those recoveries occurring in Richmond.   

“QTS federal and enterprise customers are extremely interested in hosting their IT infrastructure in an energy efficient environment to be good stewards of resources and to reduce their energy consumption costs,” said Jim Reinhart, chief operating officer, development and operations—QTS. “With our focus on premium data center services and environmental responsibility, we look forward to earning additional LEED certifications.”